Looking at recent cases (marriage equality, affirmative action, abortion restrictions) in which Kennedy has been the 5th vote clearly show that his retirement does matter. Even if it didn't, Gorsuch is 31 years younger than Kennedy. That matters a lot.

I dunno....I still say that the departure of the Fat Fuck, Scalia, was the best thing that could have happened in my lifetime. Now, though? Who knowz?

The few moderate senate Republicans (Flake, Collins, etc.) can make their marks in history by aligning with Righteousness, if/when it comes to that. McCain did it on the Health Care Reform....maybe some others will finally grow spines and handle this like Real American Leaders.

If we have the opportunity, we need to not be above seating more judges. There isn’t a rule that states SCOTUS has nine. We need to start beating Republicans at their own bullshit or our country will end up going way backwards.

Collins said she won’t back any justice that won’t support Roe V Wade, I’d guess Murkowski is the same..but who knows if they can stay strong (again).

_________________“Anyone point out that a Donald Trump anagram is ‘Lord Dampnut’”- Colin Mochrie

If we have the opportunity, we need to not be above seating more judges. There isn’t a rule that states SCOTUS has nine. We need to start beating Republicans at their own bullshit or our country will end up going way backwards.

Collins said she won’t back any justice that won’t support Roe V Wade, I’d guess Murkowski is the same..but who knows if they can stay strong (again).

I won't hold my breath. Both Collins and Murkowski have repeatedly voted for judges who vow to overturn Roe v Wade.

Further, why would either believe anything that any nominee says. The nominee will say what he needs to (obviously a he) and then do whatever. Remember, Gorsuch refused to answer virtually any question during confirmation hearings.

The Court isn’t self-starting institution that decides whatever it wants. The real problem is that the federal government has claimed too much power (including criminal code) making too many things into literally federal cases.

Against these major positives, Kennedy also gave us three massive clunkers, where he cast key votes in favor of terrible results: Kelo v. City of New London, Gonzales v. Raich, and - most recently - the travel ban case.

Again and again, Kennedy made rulings that aggrandized the power of the Court and of himself as its swing justice. No justice, right or left, was more willing to substitute his judgment for that of elected officials and voters. No justice was less willing to tie himself down to clear rules or a legal philosophy that would constrain him in future cases, let alone rules or a philosophy that bore a plausible relation to the Constitution. We moved toward a system of government no Founder intended, in which his whim determined policy on a vast range of issues.

The left wing, which is no longer remotely liberal, will present no reasoned analysis of any of Trump's nominees, but will reflexively raise the same decades-old scare tactic against any and all of them: they will ban abortion, abortion, abortion, abortion, abortion. And likely remove all legal protections from racial minorities, women and LGBTQ's. When, in fact, all 25 judges on Trump's list, collectively, have probably participated in only a tiny handful of peripheral cases in those areas. 99% of what all judges work on are boring nuts and bolts legal issues, not big social or cultural controversies.

I do not understand the factual predicate upon which someone above would say, "Both Collins and Murkowski have repeatedly voted for judges who vow to overturn Roe v Wade." I'm not aware of any Supreme Court nominee (or nominee for any other federal court) who has ever said they would vote to overturn Roe (or any other case) -- not even Robert Bork, who, while critical of the extra-constitutional rationale of Roe, like many scholars, never said he would buck precedent.

Roe has now reached 45 years of precedential status, and I don't see any court overturning it at this point. I can only think of four sitting Justices who have voted against Roe or have expressed in judicial opinions a preference to overrule it: Byron White (retired 1993), William Rhenquist (died 2005), Antonin Scalia (died 2016), and Clarence Thomas (still on the Court). I believe the most that would happen with another textualist-originalist Justice on the Court will be some tinkering with regulatory laws that have plagued Roe since it was decided, simply because it's the most ambiguous, controversial, divisive and murderous decision ever issued by the Supreme Court.

Obergefell (same sex marriage) will never be overruled because it's not ambiguous, will not be plagued by all sorts of continuous regulations and restrictions, and will not kill over a million babies every year.

While Brett Kavanaugh and Thomas Hardiman seem like the early front runners from Trump's 25 -- although I personally am intrigued by Thomas Lee (the brother of Senator Mike Lee, who is also on the list) -- Trump may go with a woman for political reasons, perhaps including influence on Senators Collins and Murkowski. In that case, the front runners may be Amy Coney Barrett, Allison Eid and Joan Larsen.

Larsen won me over with this humorous and poignant tribute to Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked:

Trump said yesterday that he's narrowed his short list to five candidates including two women.

From conservative and even left wing commentators, I sense a movement in favor of Amy Coney Barrett, the 46 year old mother of seven and avowed Roman Catholic, who has been a judge on a federal Circuit Court for a year after a career primarly as a Notre Dame law professor. She, like Joan Larsen, is a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia.

The mental relief that one will never again have to read an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy is enough to satisfy for weeks. Just be glad for this, I’m telling myself. We never have to hear this man explain that his job is to “impose order on a disordered reality.” In an America of 300 million people, the likelihood of finding a new justice with Kennedy’s self-regard is near zero. After all, Donald Trump is unlikely to appoint himself.

The author then makes the case that Barrett will be a great candidate, not only because of her credentials and gender, but because the Democrat senators will nationally embarrass themselves when they cannot control their irresistible impulses to attack Barrett's Christian religion, especially given that she's a fecund and apparently conservative woman.

This religious attack is exactly what Senators Feinstein, Durbin and Franken did during her Circuit Court confirmation hearings -- see YouTube -- eliciting strong censures from the presidents of Notre Dame, Catholic University and Princeton, among many others. The Constitution (Art. VI, Cl. 3) specifically commands that there shall be "no religious test" for any federal office. Nevertheless, in their uncontrollable obsession to paint Barrett as anti-abortion, the Dems, says the author, will yet again attack her purported religious beliefs because they have no real bullets in their guns.

Evangelical groups also seem to be rooting for Barrett, also because they perceive her to have pro-life beliefs. See, e.g., HERE.

However, as I cautioned about the solid precedential strength of Roe in my previous post above, Barrett HERSELF has said that she does not believe the Supreme Court will change the core abortion rights of Roe and Casey, but at most will become more amenable to some restrictions. You can watch her saying this in a 2016 interview at 37:30 – 39:05 of this YouTube video (a researched-by-me detail you are unlikely to see in the superficial media):

On the left wing hand, uber-liberal Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe, the aging dean of the constitutional law professoriat in the USA, also believes Barrett will be the choice, tweeting:

Quote:

I’ll be surprised if Amy Coney Barrett isn’t Trump’s nominee. The youngest on the short list (46), she was confirmed to CA7 last year 55-43, with Dems Manchin, Donnelly and Kaine all voting to confirm her. And her opposition to abortion seems more personal than jurisprudential.

The Times article describes an unusually close relationship between Anthony Kennedy and Trump and a "quiet campaign" from the White House to encourage Kennedy to retire. Trump has praised Kennedy and his work, though it has included decisions on hot-button issues such as abortion, marriage equality, and the death penalty that many conservatives disagreed with.

When Trump said he couldn't get a fair trial from a Mexican judge, there was massive indignation from both sides at the idea that a judge would be biased and not just follow the law.

It wasn't a Mexican judge, it was an American judge.

There was massive indignation at the idea that a judge would be biased based on his race or heritage, in the absence of any evidence of such bias relating to the specific judge in question.

OK, Mexican-American judge. There were polls showing that 85% of Hispanics had an unfavorable opinion of Trump. And the judge was a Mexican-American Hispanic who belonged to a Latino law group that gave a college scholarship to an illegal alien. The odds he had an unfavorable opinion of him were likely higher than 85%.

How could there be evidence in this regard? When is the last time he tried a case in which the defendent was viewed unfavorably by 85% of Hispanics?

When Trump said he couldn't get a fair trial from a Mexican judge, there was massive indignation from both sides at the idea that a judge would be biased and not just follow the law.

It wasn't a Mexican judge, it was an American judge.

There was massive indignation at the idea that a judge would be biased based on his race or heritage, in the absence of any evidence of such bias relating to the specific judge in question.

OK, Mexican-American judge. There were polls showing that 85% of Hispanics had an unfavorable opinion of Trump. And the judge was a Mexican-American Hispanic who belonged to a Latino law group that gave a college scholarship to an illegal alien. The odds he had an unfavorable opinion of him were likely higher than 85%.

How could there be evidence in this regard? When is the last time he tried a case in which the defendent was viewed unfavorably by 85% of Hispanics?

So you're saying Mexican-Americans are incapable of being unbiased judges.

The Times article describes an unusually close relationship between Anthony Kennedy and Trump and a "quiet campaign" from the White House to encourage Kennedy to retire. Trump has praised Kennedy and his work, though it has included decisions on hot-button issues such as abortion, marriage equality, and the death penalty that many conservatives disagreed with.

Shocking.

This fucker is soooo dirty....i'm shocked people turn a blind eye to it, even for whatever single-issue Trump gives them a boner on.